Greetings, fellow digizens of the self-hosted world. I’ve spent considerable time pondering the relationship between Open Source and Anarchy.
As a coder and an enthusiast of decentralized systems, I often see Open Source as a haven of freedom and self-governance, a space where hierarchy dissolves into a shared ownership of ideas and creations. This brings to mind the principles of Anarchy, where power is decentralized and the collective rules.
But let’s be honest. Sometimes, Open Source feels more like a wannabe rock star, a lot of hype with a record deal that doesn’t quite hit the right notes.
It led me to wonder: Is the parallel I draw between Open Source and Anarchy a fair one, or is it a misplaced association?
If this is too far off-topic, just let me kniw and I shall remove it!
Great conversation topic. Although it might be in the wrong community.
I do feel there are shared values when it comes to many open source projects and the concepts of anarchy. As anti-capitalists, Anarchists usually believe in so form of “open source”, where resources, goods and services are freely given to participates in the project.
That being said, many open source projects are hierarchically organized. And thus not following an anarchist model. Take grapheneos for example. Open source project, great software, Lead dev was toxic af.
They recently stepped down as head of the project( almost certainty for the better.) But I wonder what the impact of him stepping down will have on the project and if a more horizontal organization stategy would have prevented the toxic situation from occuring.